This Halloween the dolls are back in town and ready for revenge, so don’t pull any Trump costumes from the CVS discount shelf (they don’t call it Knockdown Center for nothing).

Shock Value, Glam, and Ragga all have distinct vibes but will converge, make a pact, and massacre their past personas to create a Frankenstein’s Bride of a mega party for Halloween 2018! The Shadow of the Cat is taking its cue from the slashers of the past, present, and future, so think of ya girl Lorena Bobbet, ya sister Asami Yamazaki in Audition, and don’t forget Crystal Johnson from Wives with Knives!

NYC’s relationship to nightlife can be a true horror story when you roll up to one of these “woke” nightclubs which are actually just run by racist, transphobic owners and staff who actually live in Williamsburg but are always reppin’ “Bushwick Nightlife 4 Ever.” But nightlife is where many of us go to find our people, it’s church, but this year there’s no time to show off to your mom and grandmaw by coming down the aisle to get some shine for saying “I’ve been saved.” If you wanna feel safe and sound head to Happy Fun Hideaway cuz this party is going to be psycho and no one can save you now, not even La Chat!

Maggie Lee’s Music Videos is the artist’s first exhibition in London. On view at Arcadia Missa until October 27, the show features two music installations playing in tandem, Galcher Lustwerk and Miho Hatori’s New Optimism, respectively.

Whitney Claflin writes: “On two TV sculptures, Maggie Lee presents music videos. The visuals are set to the music of Galcher Lustwerk and Miho Hatori’s New Optimism. They play concurrently. There is a stamp for entry. On the wall, a framed body– an image of a birth, twins built of disco ball parts. In the gallery’s office, a concoction of magnesium powder and glitter crystalline is adhered to paper.

Crystalline, 2018, magnesium, glitter on paper.

The tension between the two audios tracks pulling against each other reminds us that sound can also be felt. The viewer is encouraged to move through rooms as the music pulls them in different directions, much like a club night with multiple rooms, or due to the stamp for entry, more like a discotheque. By mixing analogue and digital, Lee creates sculptural soundbaths accompanied not so much by quotidien items, but things that could be considered throwaway bedroom objects– funky-colored baubles and hair clips that one could find hiding under their bed minimally adorn the space, harking back to visuals of a teen-dream movie bedroom. Lee is a master of this style of heightened domestic symbolism.

Maggie Lee, Music Videos (2018), installation view at Arcadia Missa.

Miho Hatori MV (2018) details.

However, this exhibition expands those ideas and Lee’s work transposes domestic themes and video sculptures. Being a child from the 90’s, music videos– usually viewed in a domestic setting, bedroom or living area, are the perfect conduit for Lee. Birth of Twins (2018) features the “image of a birth, twins built of disco ball parts”– inviting us to dance, enjoy, feel fulfilled. The haptic nature of this work and the concoction piece hanging in the gallery’s office mediate a tactile, sensory relationship between the two videos. Through Music Videos, the viewer is invited to smell, hear, see, and most importantly, touch– with our eyes and ears.

Birth of Twins, 2018, disco tiles on paper, framed.

Photo credit: Time Bowditch. Images courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa.

Join us in celebrating the closing of our second annual benefit auction, powered by Artsy, with an evening of music and performance at the Top of the Standard. Thanks to Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Angela Dimaguya, and Ashley Santoro, guests can enjoy our signature cocktail called “the 30%” drawing attention to the fact that only 30% of artists with gallery representation are women or gnc.

Lonely Boys are Daphne Ahlers and Rosa Rendl – an artist collective which has performed together since 2010. The duo has stated “Lonely Boys hopes to explore new ways of creating music which is embedded in contemporary culture and resists trite modes of representations.” The artpop-duo is known for their soft synthetic sound concoctions; Lonely Boys‘ new E.P. “Shadow of the World” is out now on Itunes.

Revolving around the promotion of sexual health, wellbeing, and ecosexuality, the sex-positive fundraiser for Judson’s renovation fund offered booths with services such as mini sex coaching sessions by Pleasure Mechanics, sexual astrology readings, aromatherapy sessions by Gayle Damiano, and even one inviting attendees to create their own edible sculptures. Including fundraising efforts such as a silent auction and a raffle for sex toys and vintage porn, the crew from Gavin Brown’s Enterprise sold apparel, books and art donated from friends and family, featuring sports bras from our Software line designed by Lena Henke and Jacolby Satterwhite. Also on the table were textured ceramic hearts by Ser Serpas and free kinky cookies. The adjacent booth sold Stormy Daniels’ gender-neutral perfume Truth, which was also part of the raffle as a possible prize.

Sports bras from our Software line at the Gavin Brown’s Enterprise booth.

Themes of care-taking and community were made apparent via a continuous sound bath by Constellation Chor positioned in front of the altar, chanting and promoting a peaceful energy exchange. Beneath the soundbath site was a bed set up for free seven-minute cuddle sessions with Barbikat, whose sign read “join me for a few minutes of connecting, calming, loving.”

The first Constellation Chor soundbath of the night.

Martha Wilson and friend in attendance.

At the closing of the silent auction, the attention moved to the front of the room to announce raffle winners and introduce Linda Montano, or rather, Bob Dylan by Linda Montano. The artist, with a drawn pencil mustache, circular sunglasses and a red scarf tied around her neck, sang a love song to the pancreas, ovaries and testes while backup dancers swayed beside her. Stating that she would accept $1 for a dance, several event-goers took up her offer as she held them tenderly. It was difficult to distinguish between who was a guest and who was a close friend, creating an inherently inclusive experience.

Linda Montano as Bob Dylan.

As the event drew towards an end, Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens screened their film Water Makes Us Wet, an exploration of the ecosexuality of water, its politics, and why we must always stay wet to survive. What was meant to be a Sunday afternoon fundraiser ended up feeling like an all-encompassing sexual happening for a righteous cause.

The audience is perched on a bench between two walls, liminally: one a sturdy, utilitarian concrete brick wall, the other a thread-bare fourth wall, framed within an open garage door in a nondescript alley in a residential area of downtown Toronto, Canada. We watch as a woman standing within an elaborately-curtained makeshift bedroom — an image halfway between a Deana Lawson photo and an Isa Genzken mannequin — is getting dressed and taking photos of herself in the mirror. But where is she going? Nowhere. In this contemporary age, with our little contemporary mobile machines, none of us really ever leaves our rooms. We can all relate to that need to experiment with our bodies from the comfort of home, adding and subtracting.

Best-known as @eclectic.hoe via her presence on Instagram, Natalissa is an influencer, stylist, alchemist, artist, and activist. Yet these titles feel too structurally charged to describe her adequately. With a chosen medium comprised primarily of tactile, maneuverable objects, her practice begins at the fabric store, the hardware store, and the thrift store, where she finds everyday objects and fabrics which she repurposes into an art practice.

Some call it fashion but it’s more complex. Recently, two used lube packages were chosen by the artist as earring charms, sponsored-content at its most humbling, openly acknowledging their sexual utility. “The omGSPOT stim serum has me seeing stars???” she captioned. While she makes no claims to be a community leader, her willingness to speak so openly about her own sexuality (as well her past traumas and insecurities) her performance work rides the line of activism and art without a contrarian undertone. Confidently striving to communicate honestly, with adjustment as her primary subject matter, this aim gives the work a sensitivity rarely seen in performance.

This first performance, curated by Becca Flemming entitled An Evening with Eclectic Hoe dealt with issues of adjustment, of the natural flux of time and space, and how fixed ideas have caused problems throughout history. As Natalissa moved, poked, prodded, cut, and paste, the audience’s role shifted quickly from peeper to active viewer to participant. While watching Natalissa dress, we first became silent voyeurs. When a look was finished, she would turn to activate her audience, encouraging us to take photos. When she struggled to get into a piece of footwear, an audience member lent a hand. Natalissa laughed unperturbed remarking, “These are ski boots. They’re meant for skiing,” breaking the fourth wall.

In The Road Less Traveled (1978) by M. Scott Peck, a book that Eclectic Hoe says changed her life, the author describes that “our growth as human beings is being assisted by a force other than our conscious will.” It’s almost as if bringing the surreal parts of one’s brain to the forefront actually makes you more real.

Listen to Flourish & Thrive, the newest mix from Hitashya, the audiovisual alter ego of artist Kari (Kai) Altmann. Dive into the refreshing waters of a summer mix as we delve deeper into a season of planetary retrogrades.

315 Gallery invited artist Cecilia Salama to curate the little baby show, a group exhibition exploring “contemporary motherhood in regards to possession, religion, domination, and cuteness.” The objects and wall works in the space mimic a child’s nursery. Pastels are an obvious yet potent color scheme throughout the show introducing a proverbial playfulness.

The press release is a poem by Isadora Reisner titled “august 1939.” The poem begins with a sing-song sweetness with the speaker claiming that though they are not the mother of the baby, they will continue to dote and care. A growing sense of uneasiness emerges, however, raising themes of possession and co-dependence. This complexity parallels that of the show’s baby theme and activist aims — a portion of sales go to the Trust Women Foundation a pro-choice clinic in Wichita, Kansas.

Installation view of the little baby show at 315 Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

The works in the little baby show each have their own take on reproduction and together deliver a fantastical and coherent show with the ability to relate to everyone because, well, everyone at one point was a little baby.

December Dancerella, Flannery Silva, 2018: vinyl mat, PVC pipe.

Painting of a collage my mother made (she cut Michelle Pfeiffer’s face out so she can be Catwoman), Cristine Brache 2018: oil on canvas.

Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard’s exhibition epigenetic at Shoot the Lobster in New York invites visitors through its soft purple lighting and erotic atmosphere. The press release utilizes the script from Carolyn Lazard’s Consensual Healing (2018) video featured in the show, and is partly inspired by Octavia Butler’s science fiction short story Bloodchild. Lazard said “[b]ig themes from the story make their way into the show– we [Huxtable and Lazard] were interested in exploring trauma, survival, and the weird and complicated decisions people make to survive.”

Transporting the viewer across alien temporalities and geographies with its transcendence of both gender and humanity, Juliana Huxtable’s Untitled (2018) nudes depict an animalized human with multiple genitalia and a tail. This sexualized depiction as a call to queer reproduction/futurity complicates and replicates questions of how anxieties around difference are formed.

epigenetic is on view until June 17. Carolyn Lazard is currently featured in Post Institutional Stress Disorder, a group exhibition at Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark, on view until January 6, 2019.

Juliana Huxtable, Untitled, 2018

Carolyn Lazard, I could remember the feelings without reviving them (i), 2018

“We were interested in the pull between desire and disgust, pleasure and pain, love and abuse, the messiness of those things and how they often come together.”–Carolyn Lazard

We were recently covered in Broadly. The feature by UK editor Zing Tsjeng touched on our origins, particularly in response to the hegemonic narrative that women and gender non-conforming artists do not sell as well, or make art worthy enough of being seen. She also noted our contribution to the #NOTSURPRISED open letter which called for a no tolerance policy in response to Knight Landesman’s sexual misconduct; Tsjeng honed in on how we are venturing to reclaim and redefine the rigid art historical canon to propel us forward into a more inclusive future.

Tsjeng writes: “Topical Cream is a ‘concerted effort to change the narrative,’ [Editor Whitney] Mallett explains, adding, “I hope it gives people a space—whether that’s a space to write, a space to perform, a space to be acknowledged, or a space to just read ideas.”

“It is true that reading Topical Cream is a soothing journey into a slice of the art world that does not, for example, routinely underpay and undervalue women and gender non-conforming people.” -Zing Tsjeng for Broadly